SPORTRAITS

Fellowship and Master Craftsman: – Statement of intentBy Clive Hall

SPORTRAITS

I’m very proud to present to you, my Fellowship panel “Sportraits”.

After many years of competing in a variety of sports personally, I have come to both admire and gain inspiration from the great skill and dedication it takes a sports person to be the best they can be. It’s tough and requires untold hours of effort, training, dedication, sweat and tears!

“Sportraits” is a term I like to use to describe the very specific style of portraiture I provide for sports people. The style was developed from interviewing sports people, posing questions about their drive and motivation, their vision of themselves, and more importantly how ‘they would like’, to see themselves. Armed with this knowledge and information my sportraiture evolved to become the integration of action sports photography with studio portraiture, to produce an animated-portraiture style, something creatively different for my client. This style allows me to input my artistic expression to the commissioned work and everyone depicted in this panel are local sports stars and are my clients.

These images are presented in monochrome, to remove distraction and enhance the gritty-strength of the style, helping to portray the action, aggression, concentration, pleasure and determination of the competitors. Being involved in sport, no matter at what level, requires a certain mind-set, as well as natural talent and aptitude, it’s about personal discipline and huge daily effort to train and prepare the mind and body. Attainment may vary, but as people doing something they love, there are no disabilities or barriers to being the best they can be. Sportraits capture all of that and for me, that’s what makes them so personal and so special.

There are parallels to this in all walks of life and in many ways; this story reflects my own journey in the world of photography and what I believe is required to succeed in becoming the best I can be. It has taken me years of learning, from some great tutors, from critiques of good and bad images to enable consistent improvement as I progressed along my photography path. I studied long and hard and experimented with different ideas and styles, learning, analysing and working to improve personally, technically and professionally.

To ensure my chosen pictures accurately represented my vision for them, I experimented with different paper stock and visited a variety of companies and printing experts. However, one person’s passion for printing became apparent and it was this passion that guided me through the minefield of paper and mount choice. It complements the images and completes the work by transporting what started as a vision in my mind’s eye, into the finished panel you see here today.

I sincerely hope you gain half as much enjoyment viewing this panel, as I did producing it.